Walter-Hobbs Collection

The author describes how scientists studying the growth of complexity in nature are discovering order and pattern in chaos. He explains concepts such as nonlinearity, the Butterfly Effect, universal constants, fractals, and strange attractors, and examines the work of scientists such as Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, Edward Lorenz, and Benoit Mandelbrot.

Every day in the hours between dawn and dusk, in gardens and backyards everywhere a curious invisible world comes to life around us and beneath our feet. In The Secret Garden, David Bodanis takes us on an eye-opening journey through this mysterious domain where plants and insects engage daily in a Darwinian epic of survival. Ants navigate through a forest of grass blades, forming networks that act as a living "computer" to gather intelligence from...

A portrait of Washington, D.C. during the days of World War II.

The moving abolitionist novel that fueled the fire of the human rights debate in 1852 and melodramatically condemned the institution of slavery through such powerfully realized characters as Tom, Eliza, Topsy, Eva, and Simon Legree. First published more than 150 years ago, this monumental work is today being reexamined by critics, scholars, and students.

At 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo, the twentieth century could be said to have been born. The repercussions of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand are with us to this day. The immediate aftermath of that act was war. Global in extent, it would last almost five years and leave five million civilian casualties and more than nine million military dead. The war also left us...

From the publisher. In Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors. Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla was, without a doubt, a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices that were virtually without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered...

By mid-1942 the Japanese forces were threatening to take the colonial capital of Port Moresby and therefore gain a base to launch their proposed invasion of Australia. The allied forces needed to blunt the Japanese thrust toward Australia and thus protect the transpacific line of communications, as well as to secure a favorable position to take the offensive to the Japanese. Yet this was easier planned than executed; the Australians had been battered...

First published in 1911, "The Principles of Scientific Management" by the American mechanical engineer and efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor, is the highly influential study on industrial organization and management theory. Taylor is often referred to as the "Father of Scientific Management" and his approach to decision-making and management to optimize efficiency is often referred to as "Taylor's Principles", or "Taylorism". The impact on...

300 photographs of the North American Indian and accompanying text provide a history of Indian life. Also traces the evolution of photographic techniques and includes short biographies of important photographers.